The tennis serve is a challenging part of the game, and probably one of the most frustrating and the weakest link in a good tennis player's game. Though ball machines exist that allow practicing ground strokes like forehand, backhand, volley and overhead, there is practically no device that assists the student of tennis with their serve on the tennis court today.
Patents that aid with the ball tossing to provide target practice exist, but none seem to put the ball in the right place and allow the player to actually hit it. The challenge of a tennis coach, as she watches the student struggle with the toss as a beginner or intermediate player, is to first get the player to toss the ball at the desired location, before getting her to hit the correct ball at the desired height. Coaching time is partly wasted because the student is actually tossing the ball in the incorrect position and thus hitting faulty serves.
This invention will drop the ball for the student at the desired location at the desired instant, so the student can actually hit the ball and realize for herself the fruits of tossing the ball at the desired location. The kinetic and visual memory built by repeatedly hitting the ball at the correct location and instant will be invaluable in finally realizing where to toss the ball, so as to hit the correct serve.
For the intermediate player, a tennis coach has to struggle with finer points like refining the point of contact. No device exists that provides visual feedback on ideal point of contact between the racket and ball elevation when hitting the serve. Also, on the same lines it is very common for intermediate players to make contact with the ball lower than optimum, hitting incorrect serves. No visual feedback is currently available to a tennis coach to literally highlight this point.